Blogging: Journal Your Business Adventures, And Engage Your Prospects

I am going to admit it…

I used to say that blogging isn’t for everyone.

By that, I meant there were some businesses that probably shouldn’t blog. But I no longer see it that way. I think ALL businesses (large and small) should engage their publics this way.

I spend a considerable amount of time talking with customers and prospects about blogging…”I don’t have enough time to blog, what would I ever write about, people don’t care what I have to say, I will run out of meaningful things to say in a week,” and on and on and on…

Helping people brainstorm on creative ways to utilize a blog is a big part of what I do…

Let me just share with you one idea that I think can prove to be a cool source of content for your blog, whether it is a business or a personal blog…

Use it as a journal. Record events. Chronicle an opportunity. Tell an ongoing story about a project, a client acquisition… There is no doubt that your audience would rather follow a story – than be lectured on how to do this, how to do that…

Here are some ideas about what I am talking about:

1. Tell an ongoing story about how you sat down with a customers, came to understand a problem, and journal about how you approached the problem, and how you ultimately fared in attempting to deal with it.

2. Tell an ongoing story about how you acquired a new customers. What prompted you to initially decide they were a prospect, all the way to how you ultimately won (or lost) the business. Share lessons learned along the way.

3. Tell an ongoing story about how you (and/or your business) are involved in doing charitable work. Have you picked one cause to support? Journal about your experiences there.

4. Tell an ongoing story about how you raised capital/funding for your organization. What challenges did you face? What obstacles did you overcome (or not overcome)?

5. Tell an ongoing story about a new product launch. How did the new product get started. How did testing go? What strategies were put in place to go-to-market? How did the launch itself go? What lessons were learned?

6. Tell an ongoing story about a new marketing campaign. How was the idea conceived? What was impetus behind the strategy decided? How did the rollout go? Did it work? What lessons were learned?

7. Tell an ongoing story about how you made efforts to change the culture of your organization. Why did it need to change? Who were the principals behind the effort? How did you get organization buy-in? Did it work? Did it have the impact you wanted?

8. Tell an ongoing story about ways you tried to make your team and organization more innovative. Why was this necessary? What steps were put in place to foster this change? What reward systems were implemented to incent people to propose and try new things? In the end, was your organization more innovative?

These are just a few examples of some things you can “journal” about on your personal/company blog. Critical to understand the key point here: Telling an ongoing story…

Stories are memorable, they educate, they are sharable, and they are interesting.

Do you agree? What other ideas can you share?

[cartoon by @gapingvoid]